Jobs, training, education and all that is related.

[Mad as Fish]

I've been meaning for a while to start a thread on this general subject and the posts in the Euro elections thread prompted me to actually get on with it.

One of the big mysteries of our time is where have all the workers gone? I ask this because I hear a lot of businesses saying that they can't find people to work for them. The problem is particularly acute in the trades where plumbers, electricians, builders and mechanics just can't be got.

Personally, I hear the complaint mainly from vehicle and machinery businesses which are crying out for apprentices and have taken to poaching each others staff on a scale that nobody has experienced before.

Farmers are also complaining about staff shortages, but they are often their own worst enemy when it comes to employing people. For instance, ask 100 farmers where the staff toilet facilities are and 99 times you'll be pointed to the hedge.

Willow's post on the elections thread was an excellent starting point for discussion, the extension of degree courses to four years and the expectation that the parents will pay for it all has been a tremendous boon to the government, but I look at some of those those courses and wonder why the hell are they called degrees? They would have been no more than diplomas or certificates in my distant youth.

I've taken to advising any young folk who listen, a tiny minority I will admit, that getting a trade under their belt will stand them in far better stead in the long term than some ill defined degree, unless of course they are genuinely bright and then it's a question of working to join a profession. But, as Willow noted, getting a trade is just not posh enough, not for the students, but the parents.

Anyway, I don't believe in over long posts so I'll leave it there for now.

 

[Professor]

T'was my experience that for years after the crash, one could not find many vacancies for construction trades - right up to 2016 while over those 6-7 years there were plenty loads of opportunities in all branches of Engineering.

While I was retraining at a FAS (2013) it was noted that the Electricians Faculty had been shut down and the Centre was no longer training apprentices.

At that same time, Fas and Welfare were organising community folly's chain gang schemes and quick departures for Irish tradesmen to relocate and emigrate to Canada & Australia.

Ireland sent it's builders away. Another thing, The pay in Galway was 1/2 of Dublin and Sligo was too tight and backward to offer anything of value - Certainly not 'waged jobs'
So there's not much of a future for Tradesmen by the look of it!!

 

[Mad as Fish]

True, and how the tables have turned!

One FAS centre I know worked on the principle that if 50% of students did not find work within a year then the course was closed.

The other great question is if there is a shortage of staff in general then what is everybody doing? We keep hearing about how technology is going to replace people, and have been for a while, but not much sign of it happening.

In a way technology is producing more work, look at car design, yes CAD makes the design of the components easier, but there are more components than before, let alone all the electronic circuitry that has to developed, assembled and then fitted to the car. It's all extra work that needs to be done.